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To chuck my  into the mix, Star Ruler 2 is an extremely solid and surprisngly innovative 4x/RTS, even the mechanics it cribs from other games are implemented rather uniquely, and stuff like the diplomacy system is almost entirely novel, or at least I don't know of any other game with anything like it.It's basically Space Opera Bullshit: The Game because it does a great job of letting you build the stupidest and most insane spaceships and empires right out of The Culture novels or whatever else. Building a ringworld is extremely hard but it's also realistically an absolutely insane concentration of power and production. This game gets scale in a way very few other space games do. If I have any criticisms, it's that the game would be much improved (though it's already good) with more content, more systems, more difference between some of the races, and more map types and stuff to find in space. SR1 had the Galactic Armory mod which really made the game a lot better while relying on the existing mechanics, just by putting more content in. And also the AI is a little bit easy, or possibly the Mono are a bit overpowered given that I've yet to face much challenge playing as them. But it's definitely a good game and offers stuff you won't find elsewhere in the 4X genre.
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Mar 28, 2015 00:09
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Lorini posted:Why isn't the system with the red line connected? Mouse over a star, it will show the trade lane connections between it and nearby stars, you have to link systems following those lanes. Alternatively, build a commerce station in each system, which links systems too.
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Mar 28, 2015 00:35
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Diplomacy is actually really powerful but I admit, I don't focus on it either. I feel like I would focus on it more if I could set up rules and have it run itself. Like, if I could set the game up to autobuy enhance and cultivation cards if they cost a certain percentage of my influence, or if I could filter what messages cause popups. Also if I could set up things to spend influence freely if I'm running up against my cap, stuff like that. The system is good but you have to keep an eye on it all the time to really play it well, and I find that doesn't mesh too well with the main job of setting up your empire.
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Mar 28, 2015 02:37
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You can also save your designs and just load them up when you start a new game, which is what I do.
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Mar 28, 2015 19:02
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Drone_Fragger posted:One question about pressure and pressure capacity and suchlike: Exports do export pressure, but only for one step. So, you export a level 1 resource to a level 2 planet to get access to its level 2 resource, then export the level 2 resource to get a planet to level 3. However, the level 2 planet keeps the pressure from the level 1 resource, because it isn't exporting that, only its level 2 resource.
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Mar 28, 2015 21:11
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The whole game (and genre, honestly) has a lot of difficulty with the notion of territory control. It's sort of a thing with space games where realistically, you can't build a wall around your bit of the galaxy. On the other hand, it works much better as a game if you can have something like a front line. SR2 is better than 1 in that regard due to trade lanes but it still suffers rather with colonisation and station building. It would be nice if there were diplomatic options to prevent or eject civilisations from colonising/building in your systems, as well as perhaps some way to direct your garrison fleets in-system to get them to trash planets and stations without needing a flagship present. In some respects I think SR1 did it better where weapons fire can depopulate worlds, but you can build stuff on them to prevent that. Then you'd be able to deter colonisation just by having a missile silo in system which can nuke other worlds. RandomBlue posted:Agreed. However, you can prevent other races from colonizing systems by building an outpost there. Once the outpost has been completed and has been in place for 2 minutes (IIRC) then no other races can colonize that system without taking out the outpost first. Not, I think, strictly true. It prevents your planets from being captured, but does not prevent colonisation. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 09:07
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Given the Mono backstory, firing them out of a cannon at other planets would probably just make more enemies.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:42
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Libluini posted:Just a stupid question, since Steam has me confused: As a beta tester, do I have to buy the game again? If you bought it it should be the full version, try disabling the experimental build if you have it enabled.
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Apr 3, 2015 16:53
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I would imagine it would depend entirely on what map type you play on and how big you make it. You can certainly go for the knife fight in a cupboard if you want to.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:59
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Grey Hunter posted:You are forever beating me...;.. My general advice if you're playing any of the conventional species is to go out of your way to get name planet, enhance, and cultivation cards. If you build hydrogenators, and terraform planets to T1, you can put two cultivation cards and an enhanced 3* name card on a planet, and it will use its own level 1 resource to upgrade into a level 2 world with about 13 population. This is super handy for giving you a self-sufficient core of money generating worlds. You can then put refineries on them to get more of their resource type too, if you want to. You can do this on any world which is the other useful thing, it can turn otherwise useless worlds into useful ones. Bypassing the linking mechanic is really helpful for building more concentrated empires which are easier to defend and less prone to falling apart if you lose a key world. You still need links for high level worlds, and to make use of the really good scaling resources, but just building up a bunch of these money worlds in your core systems is really useful. Even if you don't use that exact method, naming worlds with level 3 cards is basically free income, because they get a big boost to population from it, and cultivation cards make it much easier to level up any planet. Winning wars is largely an economic thing in SR2 so being able to out-produce your enemy is very helpful. Also, build up a couple of worlds with some factories and/or production resources, and build warehouses on them. That will let you stockpile a bunch of labor and let you churn out ships very fast when you need them. Even low-production worlds can be helpful here because you will find you end up with a stockpile of labor on them every now and then because you haven't used them in a while. Warehouses make managing your production capability much easier. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 8, 2015 13:13
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Reason posted:In Quill18's Lets Try he says the game gets a little bit samey fairly quickly. Is that correct? Depends what you're used to. I would say that it does, in comparison to SR1 with the galactic armory mod. The game could do with a massive content update, it has extremely solid systems in place but would benefit immensely just from more options, more planet types, more stuff to build, more races and distinctions between them, more guns and systems for your ships, that sort of thing. Just more crazy stuff for you to build a strategy around, at the moment most of the races do play rather similarly which is a shame, and there is less room for building insane megaprojects than there was in SR1 with the removal of resources except for money, and the removal of stockpiling except for part-financing things (which the mono can't do, weirdly). As a general 4x at its price point however it's quite good, and hopefully there will be a galactic armory-like mod for it at some point. It's not really fair to compare it to SR1 in some ways because SR1 is one of the least samey games available other than like, dwarf fortress or something. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 18:11
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For those of you having empire management woes, select something and press P to stick it to your UI. It's very useful.
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Apr 13, 2015 20:09
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Yeah it should be getting more exposure, all the lovely space 4x games get plenty so god knows one of the few good ones should get a share. If he hasn't been mentioned yet Aavak plays a variety of strategy-type games and might do a look at the game if he likes it? He's got a business email in the contacts if you wanted to throw him a key maybe. Smaller than TB and quite community engaged so might have more luck? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 12:10
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DatonKallandor posted:Don't get discouraged, you made an awesome game. Especially the diplomacy system is amazing. I can't think of another game (okay I can think of one, but I'd rather not since it's MoO3) where I can have a proper diplomatic war that doesn't involve any actual fighting. I've got a save where I've got a completely war-less battle for supremacy in the galaxy where everyone's just trying to annex planets and grab as much diplomatic power as possible. I'm sure there'll be war eventually, but by the time it rolls out the winner will have been determined already with diplomacy. The diplomacy mechanic really is possibly the most unique strength of the game. It's a good game, but I can't think of any other game that does diplomacy as well as this one does. Your steam page is doing well with reviews, which is a good sign, I think if you can get the coverage the game will sell well, especially with more patches/content, it's just getting it out there.
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Apr 17, 2015 17:04
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LordSaturn posted:My main complaint would be that I'm not sure what happens if I ignore diplomacy to concentrate on shootyships, but I bet it's bad. I like shootyships You probably won't suffer any major issues from ignoring it, but it is powerful if you do it right, particularly if you co-operate with other empires so it is ideally suited to multiplayer games. I would personally like some automation to the diplomacy, being able to set up rules for purchases of cards and such, as it demands quite a lot of attention to do it properly but not a massive amount of actual planning, you just have to watch the card ticker a lot.
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Apr 17, 2015 19:07
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Firgof posted:The work on the research system upgrade continues. That reads much better than the previous one.
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Apr 17, 2015 23:04
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I would personally request not having it the same colour as the icon, because I'm colourblind so I can't read it very well at the best of times. Not crossing the icon in general would be nice, maybe write it diagonally along the top right or something? Slightly stylish and keeps it high contrast and scalable. Like this:  Could conceivably have it enlarge/contract depending on mouse proximity/whether it's the furthest extent of your research. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Apr 18, 2015 |
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Apr 18, 2015 00:42
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Angles are the future, the space future, everything is angled, and light blue, and animated, light blue spinning angled text that scrolls across the screen in random directions. Web 2.0.
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Apr 18, 2015 01:26
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This mod is pretty cool, allows a lot of customisation of how each of the weapons operates. Lets you build really varied and specialized versions of each of the weapons, would love to see stuff like this in the base game.
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Apr 22, 2015 21:42
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Generally I would recommend focusing on scaling resources, as a good scaling world can make your game, especially if it's the one that gives you artifacts, for example. Then I would suggest trying to get a ringworld up ASAP, mine all your ore rocks and build a ringworld somewhere strategically valuable, then export everything to that for extra income of everything. Otherwise I would suggest that a slightly more distributed system is best, name all your level 1+ worlds, because that gives you a bunch of extra pop and income. I don't know if the game still scales tax output based on the native resource level of the planet, but if so, high level resource worlds would be a good idea too, though the precise numbers would be needed to tell you whether it's better to do that, or to spend the time leveling up a lot of smaller worlds and naming them.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:28
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Enemies can slowboat to your galaxy quite easily, but yes, fortifying the main access point would make sense as it is probably how a lot of their fleets are likely to arrive.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:15
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wayniechan posted:This game is too much fun. To solve the problem of the enemy retaking territory, I've been putting giant engines on captured enemy planets and driving them back through gates to my homeworld to join my collection. That's right, I am space carmen sandiago. Blow up the star afterwards for good measure.
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Apr 29, 2015 00:53
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USMC_Karl posted:Well I picked this up due to Scott's stream and have worked my way through the tutorial. Getting ready to jump into my first game so.... wish me luck! Yes, though there is no specific bonus for building the ship around it save for the extra tiles you allocate to it, it just means the ship will punch above its weight a bit.
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May 4, 2015 10:04
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Seri posted:Does editing the designs of ships actually affect how they look? I haven't really bothered to do much designing on my own because it seems rather intimidating right now, but if it turns out that the looks of the ships do change I'll be way more inclined to actually make my own designs. Ships choose from a library of hull types based on the rough shape of the design, or you can select one manually.
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May 13, 2015 21:18
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Oh, yes it uses your actual tile placement to calculate the silhouette of the ship, which can either be a boon or bane to identification depending on how varied you make your designs. The research screen is much more readable now, and much more expensive. Both good, but I do find that there is a little bit of a dearth of worthwhile upgrades, things that significantly change your playstyle. I am again probably spoiled by galactic armory, but I liked getting new subsystems quite regularly in that. With things seeming rather more expensive now (or it being harder to sidestep expensive things) I'm finding I go quite a while between getting new things to play with, and the game doesn't have a huge number of them to begin with. Oh and the Prideful trait might be a bit broken, because I immediately decided to devote a few cycles to building an enormous mining ship (dubbed, Potemkin, obviously) solely for the purpose of grabbing a massive amount of influence stake without devoting any worlds to it. I ended up getting a 2.5 empire share of galactic influence for quite a while. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:36 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 23:31
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BlondRobin posted:Just as a counter-point, I love that there's not lots of pointless subsystems that serve only as 'thing 2.0' or 'thing but worse' or 'weapon but slightly higher rof/slightly lower damage'. I don't have to constantly upgrade and rebuild everything every time I get Gun 2.0, and it takes out some of the fussy micromanagement to not have a ton of worthless bits. Gun 2.0 isn't what I'm after so much as I would like more different systems. There isn't a very large amount of variety in what things you can design your ships to do or behave like, even compared to vanilla SR1. Of course, vanilla SR1 had more systems like fuel and ammo to play with but even among weaponry, there are fewer options. A lot of the gripes about upgrading designs could also be overcome with simple "replace system with new system" controls and a robust refitting mechanic. As you only control a somewhat limited number of ships directly the game would, if anything, be far better equipped to deal with things like that than many games.
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May 20, 2015 14:51
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If you're having trouble with your ships overshooting it's generally a symptom of lack of thrust. While the Newtonian motion means you don't need powerful engines to travel long distances, it does mean your ships are rather unresponsive without them. Put more thrust on than you think you'll need, it will allow you to adjust your ships in transit more easily, they'll still overshoot if you tell them to adjust in the latter half of their journey, because it's physically impossible for them to slow down faster, but the overshoot will be corrected more quickly. This applies to SR1 as well, actually. I had a lot more fun with that when I stopped trying to minmax with bussard ramjets on everything. I wish SR1 didn't become unstable in the late game with galactic armory installed, I'd play it more if so. Still never found another game that really feels as space-opera-ey as that game. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Jun 14, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 01:34
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Lprsti99 posted:We've already had one too many StarDrive/Star Ruler mixups on this page Urrrgh, yes I mean star ruler 1, not stardrive. KlavoHunter posted:What do you guys like putting on your really big flagships, specifically in that painful lull before you get the Titan Hull (and Antimatter Generator!) research done, but when the AI insists on flying around bigger and bigger flagships despite now uneconomic they are? Big one shot guns aren't practical, alas, there is no artillery analog from SR1, much to my chagrin. Generally I would say that a muon cannon is the most versatile weapon given that it punches through armor and has a fast cycle rate. Failing that, if you find your big missile launcher is being no-sold too often or wastes its shot on a small target, replace it with several smaller ones. Missiles are good in that they don't need to point forwards so just put lots on the back half of the ship. They're not terribly ammo efficient but they do work. For ammo efficiency I find a spread of laser turrets works well, very good for cutting through large numbers of support ships and generally effective against armour too when focused. Firgof, are you still planning on making that DLC I think you mentioned? Would like to throw more money at you but I have no friends who would play star ruler. Or videogames generally, actually. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Jun 14, 2015 |
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Jun 14, 2015 07:01
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doctorfrog posted:How's the AI in this game? Does it have to cheat? My two pet peeves for 4X's are flabby or cheatin' AI. AI in SR1 was utterly brutal, AI in SR2 is fairly easy but I don't know how to change the difficulty. To my knowledge it doesn't cheat on normal and probably won't cheat much on harder difficulties, going by SR1's standard. Being real time and large scale the game takes advantage of the AI's ability to multitask much better than you can which makes it challenging.
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Jun 14, 2015 07:25
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It's not quite as insane as it was in SR1 because of the fleet system. Having an AI able to control several thousand individual ships at once was... difficult to deal with to say the least.
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Jun 14, 2015 07:34
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More content is what I've been wanting for the game so that gets my buy, though you already had it really given how much I enjoyed SR1.
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Sep 22, 2015 19:19
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I took this up again for a bit and the expanded rebalance mod is pretty cool. Some neat systems in the latest version, I especially quite like their take on sensors, would love to see something like that included in the expansion (as well as proper sensor range indicators which currently the mod doesn't have, may not be supported in-engine?)
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Sep 24, 2015 19:21
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The AI will specifically try to screen the flagship with support ships, so they're literally getting in the way of the shots. If you want to snipe the flagship you need lots of concentrated forward firepower.
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Nov 27, 2015 14:23
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Did you add tyrannids or something? I mean having hive fleets intersecting the galaxy and eating everything would be pretty fun. E: actually I guess tyrannids would be the heralds themselves, whatever's chasing the nids.
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Dec 1, 2015 19:51
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Firgof posted:Well, you're an SR1 vet right? The 'good news' spoiler I added will probably immediately put things into context for you. I played a bunch of SR1 but I was a bit late to the party so I may have missed a lot of the lore and community side of things. I couldn't really 'get' the game first time round, the fuel/ammo mechanic completely threw me and I spent all my time getting stomped by the murderous AI. Once I got into it though SR1 was more or less "make up your own backstory and play a space opera novel". So I'm drawing a big blank on both, actually  I could also just be rather slow and not get it at all when I really should. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2015 09:45
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Gonna chuck money at you as soon as you give me a store page. It's a good game and you're good people.
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Apr 7, 2016 21:19
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I think my SR1 games used to take about 10 hours with galactic armory, SR2 tends to be shorter but that's because it doesn't facilitate building very far outside your income capacity while SR1 had the whole resource banking thing that let you save up easier.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:45
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Firgof posted:If anyone has suggestions on youtubers/streamers/websites that you think would enjoy or would be interested in covering the game, feel free to suggest them. I would say perhaps Aavak, he seems to like interesting games, recently has been playing From The Depths and Rimworld, not sure he does a huge number of strategy games but you could ask I'm sure, I don't think he gets a huge amount of press copies.
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Apr 16, 2016 12:08
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Firgof posted:I'm only briefly familiar with Joe - are you sure that Star Ruler 2, despite being a strategy game in space, is up his alley? He was super pumped for sword of the stars 2 before it released and was super pissed off when it was a pile of poo poo. He likes his spergy space 4Xs.
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Apr 18, 2016 17:02
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DatonKallandor posted:For what it's worth I really like the browser tab functionality and looks. They're browser tabs, you immediately know how they work and they let you do some cool stuff traditional 4x interfaces don't (multiple tabs of the same "type" looking at different things simultaneously or changing the layout of your UI on the fly). I also think the browser tab approach is very intuitive because they really do function exactly like them. I don't actually use the functionality but it's a sensible graphical decision because you know immediately how it works. It's also kind of neat that the UI can do that even though again I don't actually use it for anything.
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Apr 18, 2016 17:17
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